Keys and Lips present different takes on music from the dark side

The two bands that performed at the Sprint Center on Sunday night may have fanbases with a substantial overlap, but they are at diverging points in their careers. The Flaming Lips, who opened the show, are shedding a past that has rewarded them bountifully; the Black Keys are reaping their own rewards after preaching the same sound for more than a decade.

The Black Keys and the Flaming Lips at the Sprint Center

Still riding high on their 2011 album, “El Camino,” and its Grammy-winning single, “Lonely Boy,” the blues-rock duo the Black Keys headlined a concert Sunday night at the Sprint Center. Oklahoma-based psychedelic punk rockers the Flaming Lips, who just released a new album, “The Terror,” opened the show. Click the link to see photos from the show by The Star’s Chris Ochsner.

Fitz and the Tantrums headline festive prom night at the Midland

Friday night’s four-band bill at the Midland theater was also an ersatz prom, a reason for couples to haul out some old formal wear, get dressed up and revive their high school days. The headliners were Fitz and the Tantrums, a band from Los Angeles that is into revivals, too: of the kind of pop-soul that radio played in the late 1960s and into the 1970s.

Bobby McFerrin puts soul in spiritual improvisation

Every empty seat in Helzberg Hall on Friday night signified someone’s missed opportunity to witness one of the most uplifting, rewarding and musically satisfying shows in Kansas City this year. Bobby McFerrin melds scat-singing, vocalise, beat-box and an encyclopedic catalogue of melodic knowledge into a performance style that’s very physics is boggling.

KC ensemble to deliver Beck’s ‘Song Reader’

A KC jazz project gathers around songwriter Beck’s “Song Reader,” a group of 20 songs that existed only on paper and awaited interpretation. Pianist Mark Lowrey and others will perform all the songs Friday night at RecordBar.

Pianist Gerald Clayton plays in the new mainstream

Gerald Clayton, the top-notch young pianist who’s bringing his trio to the Blue Room on Saturday, is searching for new grooves and sounds but plays with taste and style, the kind that comes out of tradition, related to that thing called swing.

Review: Eldar returns with own compositions

Eldar Djangirov, the room-filling pianist, returned to Kansas City Sunday for a multi-night run at Jardine’s and took no time at all to endear himself to a loyal crowd. In the first set, the onetime prodigy showed off the full range of his talents, as a formidable performer and now an emerging composer.

Ticket alert

On the way: Steely Dan, Straight No Chaser, Guns N’ Roses, Kelly Rowland, Carly Rae Jepsen

Charismatic Tenors charm audience at the Midland

Four engaging young Canadians known as the Tenors beguiled a capacity crowd Friday night at the Midland Theatre with a polished road show that covered musical territory from immortal tenor arias to American religious music to Elvis Presley and Bob Dylan to Broadway tunes and to original material.

Ticket alert

Tickets for Mary J. Blige, Robert Cray, Iron Maiden and Megadeth tickets go on sale Friday.

No weak link in Cantus ensemble’s lineup

The Harriman-Jewell Series presented an eclectic performance Thursday by Cantus, a nine-voice, Minneapolis-based men’s vocal chamber ensemble. “On the Shoulders of Giants” was a polished and rewarding program to hear. The really outstanding voice of the nine belongs to tenor Paul Rudoi, but there’s no weak link in the group.